


If You Love Somebody

by lilacsigil



Category: The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Mysticism, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 08:55:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13120398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacsigil/pseuds/lilacsigil
Summary: In the cavern beneath the collapsing Midland Circle building, Elektra knows that Matt is hers, now and forever.





	If You Love Somebody

**Author's Note:**

  * For [awpizzadog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/awpizzadog/gifts).



> Thanks to SA for the beta.

The sky was falling, and Elektra delighted in it. Matthew had chosen to stay with her and die rather than run. Of course, she knew that he had been choosing her all along: last time she had come into his life he had lied to his friend Foggy, lied to that tall blonde woman he wanted to impress, lied to their faces and left them alone to deal with the troubles he had brought them. And now, with his new, powerful friends in tow, he had chosen her once more. He had sent Jones, Cage and the Iron Fist to safety and run to her without hesitation. 

"You can't leave me. Not again," he told her, and she watched his pretty lips move, his face free of that ridiculous mask. Though she had to admit, it could certainly take a hit. 

"I won't leave you, Matthew," she told him, smiling, before lashing out at him with her sai, trying to drive him to where he needed to be. He tried to kick her weapon away, but she was faster and turned his strike aside. 

"Gao!" He abruptly turned and Elektra cursed: that was not the fight she wanted. 

Madame Gao emerged, at her usual sedate pace, from behind a pillar. There was a splash of blood on her face, but she herself seemed uninjured. A large chunk of rock fell in her path and she continued towards Matthew without a moment's hesitation, as if even the collapse of this building was happening in accordance with her plan. 

"Elektra," she said, completely ignoring Matthew. "I see that you have your treasure, and I will soon have mine. Surely we have no need to fight?"

"I'm not letting you walk out of here," Matthew threatened, moving closer. He nimbly jumped aside as a pillar collapsed between them. 

Elektra grabbed Matthew by the arm and threw him to the ground. She couldn't have him running wildly around the collapsing cavern: even his incredible senses couldn't save him forever. 

"Go!" she shouted to Gao, over the booming of yet more explosions. "We will meet again one day."

"Oh, I am very sure of that," Gao replied, never raising her voice and yet projecting perfectly. She moved through the excavation towards the massive skeleton, rock and dust falling in her wake. 

Matthew scrambled to his feet. "What are you doing? If we let her go, it will all happen again!"

"The Hand? No, it's finished."

Matthew shook his head and ran after Gao. At least he was going in the direction that Elektra wanted him to go. She raced after him, but was slowed for a moment when a steel beam plunged through the rubble and stabbed into the rock right in front of her. She leapt clear, shielding her face from the dust, then skirted the obstruction as more debris followed its path downwards. She did not have long to save Matthew now.

When she caught up to Matthew, he was circling Gao, trying to work out a weakness in her stance. Gao, of course, did not have one, and was calmly pulling chunks of bone from a shattered part of the wall and putting them in a wheelbarrow. 

"You are wise not to attack me," she said, not bothering to look at Matthew. "Despite your posturing you are not a fool."

"You expect me just to let you go?" Matthew snapped. "After all the people you killed?"

The ground shook abruptly and both Elektra and Matthew stumbled, but Madame Gao only swayed gently with the movement. "If you think carefully, you will find that leaving me alone will cause less harm. If you attempt to fight me you will lose anyway, and won't that give me a reason to take revenge on your friends, hmm?"

Everything shuddered, and this time Matthew ran lightly across the wave to strike at Madame Gao. She caught his fist in her open palm and twisted, spinning him to the ground. He'd been prepared for her straight-armed technique, somehow, and rolled with it so he could come up in a two-footed kick that caught Gao cleanly in the stomach. The attack knocked her backwards into the wall of dragon fossil. Her fingers dug into one of the huge ribs and ripped a fist-size section free. It flew without any need for a throwing motion and hit Matthew in the face at high speed, sending him stumbling away from Gao. Elektra leapt on Matthew and pinned him, sitting on his chest with her knees on his biceps. 

"Enough, Matthew. Let her go. Stay with me."

He tried to get up, pushing his torso up to unbalance her, but she rolled with it and ended up with Matthew on top and Elektra locked onto him with wrapped legs. As he tried to get to his feet, she dragged him down and held him until Madame Gao had collected what she needed. She made a small, sardonic bow to Elektra, and hobbled away pushing her wheelbarrow full of treasure. 

"You let her go," Matthew said bitterly. 

"I kept you here. That's more important."

"She must know a way out. We could follow her, stop her on the outside." 

Elektra pressed the side of her face against his and whispered in his ear. "Is that what you're thinking about? You wanted to be with me, in life or death."

"I won't leave you. But Gao brought you to life and used you as a tool! You can't be free with her still living."

Elektra relaxed her hold on Matthew, finally, and laughed. "Oh, Matthew. You helped me remember who I am. I am free. Stick could not control me. Gao cannot control me. You, at least, have not tried."

Matthew tilted his head in that way he had, listening. "She's gone, anyway. It's just us. Can you hear the walls collapsing?"

She could, or at least their final groans, and she grabbed Matthew and pulled him close, kissing him with all the bright life within her. He kissed her with equal passion, pressing his body into her so hard that she could feel their hearts beating in rhythm as they melded into one. She hooked a foot around the back of his leg and rolled them down into the skull of the dragon; Matthew paid no attention to anything but Elektra, and then she lost herself fully in him. 

With a massive noise that even Elektra felt more than heard, the cavern finally gave way and the entire building collapsed into it. Darkness engulfed them, the after-images of sparking wires and flickering flames racing across Elektra's vision and for a moment she lost consciousness completely. 

She was still locked onto Matthew's body, lying protectively on top of him, but he was motionless. She carefully ran her fingers over his face in the complete darkness and found blood trickling from his ears, clotting quickly with the dust of the fallen building. This close to him, she could feel his rasping breaths against her lips. She slowly traced the rest of his body, finding the fastenings of the armour and, piece by piece, removing it and checking underneath. It didn't seem that he was badly injured anywhere else. The chest plate was locked into place on one side where it had been deformed by a heavy blow, so she had to remove it still joined to the backplate. When she lifted Matthew up to free him from the armour, he groaned but did not wake. By the time she had removed the leg and arm protection, though, his breathing was a little faster and he was beginning to stir. 

"Matthew," she whispered, lying down on top of him, moulding her body to his. "Matthew."

He muttered something, then tried to sit up abruptly. Elektra was glad she had restrained him when he immediately collapsed, then rolled on his side to vomit. 

"Elektra?" His voice was raspy and unusually loud for him. 

She kept her voice low: even half-deafened, Matthew would be able to hear her perfectly. "Shhh. Everything will be okay. There was an explosion and your ears are damaged. Your hearing will return, don't worry."

"Ah. How? How are we alive?"

"The dragon's skull is impervious to any force, even the Iron Fist. You will be able to follow Gao's path out."

Matthew laughed, an oddly breathy noise. He would be feeling the injury to his ribs since the adrenaline and discipline of the fight had worn off. "You planned this from the start. You were never going to die."

Elektra laughed, too. "Oh, Matthew. I have been dead. I may not fear it, but I have no wish to return there when I have worked so hard to bring myself back. Not my body, you understand. Alexandra did that part. But my mind, my soul. I did not understand how precious they were."

"I did. I knew. I only wanted to be here with you, whatever that meant." 

She kissed his face, finding her way to his lips in the darkness. "Poor Matthew, you are still dizzy. We'll rest here a little. I'm sorry I have no water."

"It's dark, isn't it? Otherwise you wouldn't have kissed the side of my chin." 

"Yes, completely dark. Gao would not expect that she was leaving a trail for you to follow. She does not know you like I do. Nobody does."

Matthew started to sit up, groaning as he did. "My armour?" 

"It was damaged, and I had to see if you were hurt." 

"Not badly. Help me up?"

"Take your time. You are already off balance."

They sat for a while longer, re-learning each other's faces and bodies, while Matthew's vertigo slowly faded. Eventually he made it to a standing position, his natural sense of balance reasserting itself and they could begin the slow walk down the huge skeleton in Gao's footsteps. 

As Elektra had predicted, the ancient and cunning Madame Gao had made sure to leave herself an escape route. Despite Matthew's dizziness and the massive damage, Gao's trail was clear and they followed an old stone ventilation shaft slowly upwards. Quickly, even Elektra's duller senses could tell the difference between the shattered stone and concrete of the wreckage and the solid old stones of the ventilation shaft. 

"How did Gao get a wheelbarrow up here?" Matthew asked, as they pressed themselves back to back to climb a particularly slippery and steep section. "There's a weird smell, like burned cinnamon, but not."

"Even if could you ask her, she would never tell." 

Matthew laughed softly at that, careful of his ribs. "They're going to be so surprised that I'm alive. And all it took was a dragon skull and an old lady with a flying barrow."

Elektra took a long breath. Now was the time to ask, to determine his fate. "You're going to return to them? To Foggy and the others? I saw you speaking to the Iron Fist…"

"His name is Danny. I asked him to take care of the city for me, but instead we can both do that. You and I. The remnants of the Hand are likely to be causing trouble for him and Luke. And they've seen Jessica, too."

Elektra rested for a moment, sad at how quickly Matt wanted to open up their private world, find these friends and give them his presence and loyalty and love. They were keeping him from his true self, dragging him down. Elektra herself was no better. 

They climbed further and Elektra began to feel the movement of air on her skin. "Are we close?"

"You can feel the breeze? That's from a cross-tunnel, which means that we're at least level with the A/C/E line. Only about 40 feet to go."

After they climbed past the next tight bend, light began to filter into the tunnel. It wasn't enough for Elektra to actually see anything, but after so long in complete darkness it was a relief to realise that vision wasn't merely a memory. "There's a little bit of light, Matthew."

"Okay, good. We're nearly there, and there'll be evacuation stairs in a minute or two, to get us up past street level."

"We can't get out at street level?"

"These days the big vents are up at roof level, not on the street. There might be a hatch before we get that far up, though."

Elektra could make out the shape of Matthew's legs, still climbing above her, and a few spots of light far ahead. A train passed below them somewhere and a huge rush of warm air pushed up. 

"Here's the stairs!" Matthew tapped the first steel step so that she could hear it, and a moment later she was there, taking a momentary rest: even her strong thighs were aching from the climb, and Matthew must be feeling the pain in his ribs. He stopped too, just above her. "Are you okay, Elektra?"

"It's been a long night."

"Ha, it has. But we're nearly there." He climbed a few dozen steps, now in the dim orange glow of emergency lights, then tapped on something else metal. "Here's a hatch, and I can open it from this side. We made it!" Matthew laughed, though it was a tired sound.

They scrambled through the hatch and out into a wooden-floored room with incongruous antique plaster moulding. More prosaically, a huge steel pipe continued up above them. The light was fluorescent, not daylight as Elektra had expected, and there was a staircase leading down on the other side of the pipe.

"Where are we?"

"It's a façade house – they built them when the subway was constructed to hide the vents. From the street it looks like a regular brownstone, but inside it's pipes like this, and emergency exits. Where are we headed? It's daytime outside and I don't really want to be running around the city covered in dust right after an explosion."

"It's a good look on you," Elektra demurred, then shook her head. "There's some coveralls here. Put them on and we can make it to one of Alexandra's homes near here. If any Hand have fled there, we can catch them before they go any further."

Matthew sighed, but squared his shoulders. "Do you think there will be?"

"The rank and file didn't know about most of Alexandra's boltholes, but I thought it best to warn you."

"Thanks. Then we can regroup, get in touch with the others to see if they made it out safely."

Elektra stuffed the legs of the coveralls into her boots to hide that they were much too big for her, and rolled up the sleeves. "Here, let me clean us up a little." She did what she could with another pair of coveralls, but both of them were still grimy. Putting her hair in a ponytail wasn't much help but at least she fit the role better. Her one remaining sai fit neatly on her thigh under the baggy grey cloth.

As it happened, no-one paid two dust-covered workers any attention, beyond that required to avoid them. It was the morning rush and everyone had coffee and the workday on their minds. Matthew led them through a series of smaller streets and up over rooftops to reach Alexandra's home just a few blocks away. They crouched on the fire escape outside her huge apartment.

"Any signs of the Hand?" Elektra asked, detecting none herself. She would rely on Matthew's assessment before her own, though. 

"Nothing. There's a lot of electronic security in there, though – motion sensors and cameras at least. And heavy shutters that will lock us out."

"Or in," Elektra murmured.

"What?"

"If someone was in there, they would have closed the shutters," she explained. 

"Oh, yes, of course. Do you have the codes?"

"It's palm print security. If you find me some water to clean off this dust, I can get us in."

Matthew nodded, and dropped down from the fire escape. He returned a minute later with a bottle of water and somebody's clean, not-quite-dry bath towel. 

"You always spoil me, Matthew." Elektra cleaned up, then they climbed down to street level, the secluded side exit. She drew her sai and forced open the locked cover of the scanner, then placed her clean palm on the panel. It blinked green and the door opened. She took a deep breath: this is where she had so wanted to bring Matthew, and now he was here. 

Inside, the apartment was spacious but silent, with the art the only sign of the long, long life spent here. The sounds of the city were blocked out, furniture was restrained and minimal, the floors polished, and the thing out of place was the fresh scrape mark on the parquetry. Good: Elektra was in the right place, as she had guessed. Alexandra, like the rest of the Hand leaders, was slow to plan and slow to adapt: she hadn't truly understood that she was, finally, mortal, not the way Elektra understood it, or Matt. Her illness, to her, had been merely a warning sign to move on with her plans, not a death knell. Everything she had planned was still in motion, but not how she had intended. This sanctuary had been taken by Elektra. 

"Sit, Matthew." She pushed him down onto one of Alexandra's low white sofas. "You're hurt and tired." She entered the kitchen and poured a glass of water, then brought a bowl of fresh plums that had been sitting on the bench. "Are any of these good?" 

Matthew was relaxing, finally. He drank the water and took one of the plums. "I have no idea what variety this is, but it smells great." He bit into it, his tongue carefully catching every drop of juice. 

"Pick one for me." 

He hesitated over two of them, then eventually chose one, which Elektra ate with delight. It was the sweetest thing she'd tasted since she awoke, though she didn't know if it was the fruit itself, that Matt had picked it for her, or that she ate it as a free woman, those who used her dead by her hand. 

"I'm sorry they made you kill Stick. You two were close," Matthew said, as if he was reading her thoughts. Sometimes she thought he did, or that she read his. 

She dropped the plum stone in Matthew's empty glass and curled up beside him on the white sofa, grimy with the dirt from their clothes and hair. She didn't care: Alexandra's things should be destroyed. Maybe not the art: it was not the creators' fault that their work had fallen into Alexandra's possession. She rested her head against his uninjured side, listening to him breathe.

"Oh, Matthew, that's not what happened. You helped me so much. You helped me remember who I am when they all tried to make me into their weapon instead."

He shifted, slightly uncomfortable, but put his arm around her, holding her close. "You fight hard, for someone who's not a weapon."

"I am a weapon, Matthew. Just not their weapon. Come on, let's get clean." 

"Then we should call Luke or Jessica and check that they're okay before we bring Foggy or Karen into this. We didn't see any Hand on the way here, though. You said they're defeated, but that doesn't mean every single one of them. And there's Gao, of course."

"Gao needs time to strengthen herself, and most of her drug network is gone. Come on, Matthew, look after yourself for once."

Matthew laughed, still gingerly, holding his ribs. "Sure. I could use a shower."

They stripped off in the bathroom, cool white marble like a grand mausoleum. The water was warm, though, and the delicately fragranced soap and shampoo declared good by Matthew, and that was everything Elektra needed. They washed each other clean, clinging close under the water, the ruin of the Hand's sacred cavern running down the drain in a muddy spiral. Elektra wondered if there was any dragon bone in there and decided that she didn't care. 

"Alexandra was pretty tall – I'm sure there'll be something to fit me," Matthew said as they dried themselves on soft white towels. His body was more scarred than when she'd last seen it.

"You don't need that," Elektra told him. "Come with me." She took his hand and led him away to the living room, both of them naked, their bare feet leaving damp marks on the polished floor. Her heart beat faster, no matter how determined she was to be calm. Matthew needed to be free as she was: anything less was cruel.

She picked up her sai from the sofa as she led Matthew into a room of sculpture. Elektra recognised some of them as Greek and Turkish, all from about the first century CE, in bronze and marble. In the middle of the room stood the great iron vessel in which Elektra had been reborn. 

"Why is that here?" Matthew asked, running his fingers along the details of the cast surface, touching the symbols that read "Black Sky". 

"I thought Alexandra must have brought it here, to keep it away from the rest of the Hand leaders. It's a powerful thing, resurrection." Elektra thought again that Matthew must read her thoughts, or perhaps merely knew her too well, when he turned towards her and asked the question he had nearly asked before.

"Why did you kill Stick? You knew who I was, then. Did you know who you were killing?"

"Yes, of course I did, by then. He still knew me well. He still thought I belonged to him, his weapon." 

"But he was kind to you!" Matthew protested, as if this made a difference. 

"He used me, Matthew, and he tried to have me killed. He was far crueller to you."

"He loved you!"

"Yes, he did. And yet he still made me into a weapon, and, as soon as he called on you, you came running to him. He made those bonds as tight as death." She clenched the fist that didn't hold the sai. "Tighter, or so he thought."

Matthew reached out and wrapped his strong fingers around her fist, smoothing out her fingers. "He was helpless. You didn't have to kill him."

She let him open her fist, not wanting him to be afraid. "Of course I did. It was the only way to be free of everything he had done to me, everything Alexandra did to me. And I want to give you the same chance."

Matthew's mouth opened to ask her what she meant. His body was relaxed and his defences down, or she never would have been able to strike his throat so hard, nor follow up with the stab to the heart. He died swiftly and silently, still holding her hand in his.

Elektra was surprised to find she was crying, first a trickle of tears and then a great flood. She threw herself on Matthew's body, sobbing, great cries ripped from her soul. From the very start, she had known that he would be free of her, too, and while she wanted to give him that gift, she had not realised how much it would hurt. 

She could not cry forever: after a timeless while she wiped her face with her bare arm and began to prepare his clean, still warm body, taking care to be extra gentle with the black bruises on his ribs, though she knew he could not feel pain now. She wrapped him in the ceremonial cloths, soaked in the liquid made of crushed dragon bone and the pure water from a well in K'un Lun. Alexandra had already shown her the precious water, so Elektra added the bone that she had brought from below and ground in an ancient silver dish that Alexandra had on display. She crossed Matthew's arms over his chest, tying the strips tightly in place, exactly as had been done for her, but found she still had tears left when she had to cover his face. The teardrops mingled with the soaked bandages and she found herself hoping, however unfairly, that he might still remember her when he awoke. 

She closed the iron lid, filling the vessel with the rest of the liquid, then closed the pouring hole with a wax seal also imbued with the bone dust, whispering the incantation that still haunted her mind. Matthew would return, strong and free, and she only hoped he could find a place in his heart for her as she had for him. But that was his decision, not hers, and she would never take that from him. 

It took a long time for the Black Sky vessel to do its work, and Elektra stayed close by, not trusting anyone else to guard Matthew as she would. Before it was due to open, though, she realised that staying with Matthew after he finally awoke would be as wrong as what Alexandra had done to her. The shock and amnesia would shape him into her creature, and he would have to fight his way to freedom as Elektra had done. 

Instead, when the vessel had done its work and Matthew breathed again, liquid forced from his lungs, she dressed him in old clothes and took him to the place he needed to be. Here he would be cared for by the people who had already cared for him once, when he was small and alone and knew nothing of the world. Only in this iteration there would be no Stick to force him onto a path of pain; no Elektra to trick and test him; no Foggy to drag him into the mundane world. 

Elektra watched from a rooftop as the nuns at the homeless shelter carried him in from the cold. He was unconscious, sick, but finally free. Her tears were freezing to her face but she turned away resolutely, a car waiting for her on the next block to take her to the airport and away from Matthew's city. There was much for her to do, and he could not, without his own free choice, be part of it. 

"Goodbye, Matthew," she whispered, hoping both that he heard it and that he didn't, and then she was gone.


End file.
